-->"Rat" == Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:
Rat> Actually, Newton Intelligence was designed with scalability in
Rat> mind. It could run on a device the size of a pocket watch. It
Rat> could run on an "electronic whiteboard". It could run on a
Rat> plethora of devices in between.
could vs. should is the issue here. NOS/NI would be quite good on a
whiteboard, but would suck as my desktop (which i use for software
development).
Rat> Running the same OS on the desktop and the handheld is a good
Rat> idea. There is no worrying about import/export or conduits or
Rat> any of that cruft. The app that runs on your desktop is the
Rat> same app that runs on your handheld. A simple copy command and
Rat> your data is where you need it, when you need it. Of course,
Rat> that really does require an OS designed with this degree of
Rat> scalability in mind. The only one that I am aware of is
Rat> Intelligence, though QNX seems to be doing well as an embedable
Rat> OS.
the core OS of the newton does not scale that well. for example, all
NewtonScript programs run as a single OS task. memory allocation is
quite constrained. that's not to say it is a bad OS, just that
different OSes are designed for different tasks.
"linux" is a very broad term -- uClinux is quite a reasonable
soft real-time OS, but it is very different from the 2.3 on my
desktop. QNX does have excellent scaling properties.
but the real issues are quite unrelated to the OS, i think. the user
interface and storage architecture of the newton are ideal for its
application as a PDA, but far less suited for desktop use.
i always wanted to have a newton whiteboard though ... does anyone
know if Apple ever built one?
d
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 03 2000 - 09:41:17 EDT